Assimilating the Natives in the U.S. and Australia

'Europeans needed to justify their conquest…Most of all,
they had toabsolve themselves of guilt for the almost total extermination of
theprevious inhabitants of these huge areas'............Sven Lindquist[1]

Introduction

In a recent lecture by Kat Ellinghouse, it was suggested that the concept
of Assimilation meant different things to the Australian and US Governments
in the second half of the 19th Century and the first half of the 20th century.
Consequently the resultant policies, as they applied to the respective
indigenous populations, were very different in intent. In America, Ellinghouse
observed, the idea of Assimilation (both in concept and intent) was to
'absorb' the natives into the greater American society's notions and values,
but not necessarily to biologically eliminate them as a 'race'. Whereas
in Australia it might seem that this latter motive was operative, with
the ultimate aim to genetically eliminate the native populace by absorption
into the white 'race' by breeding out the negative 'native traits' through
long term intermarriage of the races.

In this essay I shall interrogate these observations of Ellinghouse
from an indigenous perspective and consider what impact this had on the
native peoples of both the United States and Australia. To do so it is
necessary to firstly examine the respective colonial origins, as well as
notions of race and white supremacist mythology that helped shape early
constructions of nationhood in each country. I will then to look at how
each of these concepts found expression in the treatment of indigenous
peoples. Finally, I shall draw conclusions on not only whether there is
substance to claims of a difference in the intent of the respective country's
policies of assimilation, but also extrapolate on some possible long term
implications that might linger in the situation today.

Different but Similar Colonial Imperatives and Racial Imaginings

The origins of the American and Australian colonies have a common European
heritage of imperialism and racial ideologies. In 18th Century Europe the
Enlightenment had shaped notions of difference and 'race'. As Emmanuel
Chukwudi Eze noted,

…the Enlightenment's declaration of itself as 'the Age of
Reason' was predicated upon precisely the assumption that reason could
historically only come to maturity in modern Europe, while the nhabitants
of areas outside Europe, who were considered to be of non-European racial
and cultural origins, were consistently described and theorized as rationally
inferior and savage.[2]

Whilst ideas of 'difference' can be found long before the Enlightenment,
in Greek philosophy and Medieval art and literature, Goldberg argues that
these early beliefs and images 'furnished models that modern racism would
assume and transform according to its own lights'. [3] From the Enlightenment
project emerged a theory of knowledge called empiricism and the 'scientific
paradigm of positivism', which involves ideas on how humans can examine
and understand the natural world. Linda Tuhiwai Smith says that this 'understanding'
was viewed as being akin to measuring,[4] thus institutionalizing an obsession
with measurement, classification, and 'knowing'. As Smith points out, the
theories and ideas of the West are,

…underpinned by a cultural system of classification and
representation, by views about human nature, human morality and virtue,
by conceptions of space and time, by conceptions of gender and race.[5]

Thus those who set out from a range European nation-states to 'discover'
and explore the new worlds of the Americas and the Pacific not only harbored
similar notions of race, but they also created in their respective new
colonies societies that bore other similarities. According to Jon Stratten
and Ien Ang,

Australia and the United States have two things in common.
First they are both products of British colonialism. Second, they are both
settler societies; that is, they are to a very large extent populated by
people whose ancestors traveled to these countries from elsewhere during
and after the colonial period.[6]

The first incursion into the domain of the native peoples of North America
came in 1497 when John Cabot landed at Newfoundland and claimed all of
North America for England. Later, the Spanish arrive in Florida in 1527,
at a moment when their Conquistadors had sated their brutality on the Aztecs
and Incas and others in the Caribbean and central Americas. Motivated by
greed for treasure and a religious zeal to convert the heathens, these
early invaders were more interested in assimilation into Christianity than
anything else. Nevertheless, by the 1620s when English Puritans first settled
in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay the Spanish-speaking presence in the
south east was still less than a thousand (mostly native converts and servants).[7]
After the 1660 Pueblo revolt the Spanish altered their ambitions from full-scale
colonisation to a more mutually co-operative climate,

The Pueblos were tacitly permitted to practice their own
faith alongside Catholicism…Colonists and colonized intermarried. The boundaries
between the Indian and Spanish worlds began to blur. [8]

In California it was a different story. This had been the most densely
populated part of North America and home to more than 300,000 native peoples
speaking eight different languages before European arrival. Fearing incursions
from Russian and British traders, the Spanish in 1769 set up a string of
missions and garrisons along 500 miles of California coast and began rounding
up the native peoples and forcing them into missions where sexually segregated
barracks and slave labour were the order of the day. Whilst 54,000 indigenous
people were baptized in California the native populations decreased by
up to three-quarters.

Meanwhile on the East Coast, the English at Jamestown in 1607, the French
at Quebec in 1608, and the Dutch at Manhattan and Long Island established
early settlements. These Dutch settlements were later swallowed up as English
settlement evolved into 12 colonies in which 400,000 whites and 40,000
black slaves were living by 1732. To the north a mere 15,000 French colonists
occupied the vast tracts of today's Canada, and to the south were the Spanish.

Back in Georgian England, in the first part of the 18th Century, the
population had been constant at about 6 million people, but between 1750
and 1770 the population doubled. Industrialization had seen the growth
of cities and towns with an attendant soaring crime rate and widespread
public drunkenness as the country took to the new 'national stupefacient'
made from juniper berries and called 'gin'.[9] In response to a belief
that crime was out of control, British legislators had begun as early as
1611 to transport convicts to the American colonies. Robert Hughes notes
that 'After 1717 transportation was stepped up…(and) provided that minor
offenders could be transported for seven years to America'.[10]

But after 1776 when the American colonies fought their war of independence
they halted the transportation of British convicts although, as Hughes
observed, the American economy was heavily dependant on the labour of the
50,000 African slaves still being imported annually. Consequently the British
looked to the recently 'discovered' possession of Australia to empty the
now overflowing prisons back home. Thus the original purpose of the settlement
of Australia was to be as a penal colony.

In 1788 the imposition of British sovereignty on Australia was justified
by the notion of terra nullius, which was a convenient means to avoid the
problem of just reparations for the indigenous inhabitants who, in the
process of being dispossessed, were thereby deemed sub-human. Ironically,
at the same time these sub-humans were instantly transformed into 'British
subjects' who were now 'protected' by, and expected to conform to, British
law. Thus the Aboriginal and Islander people of Australia were denied the
opportunity to establish treaties and have some measure of control over
both their land and future destinies. As C.D. Rowley observed,

The progress of the Aboriginal from tribesman to inmate
has been a special feature of colonial administration and of white settlement
in Australia. Some of the reasons have been humane, but institutions have
also been a method of settling or deferring political and moral issues
such as those related to rights arising from prior occupation of the land.[11]

So, despite an early fear that the French might contest the annexation
of Australia, the continent was colonized by a single European power, rather
than the situation that developed in America. Further, a significant aspect
of the early British attitude to the indigenous inhabitants of Australia
was the firm belief that Aboriginal society was in a state of decay and
would inevitably 'die out'. Therein lay the first rationalization of a
developing concept of assimilation that would differ from the American
version.

Within the emerging American colonies, de-facto recognition of indigenous
sovereignty had been bestowed in the formation of treaties with many Native-American
groups. As Prucha points out,

The cession of Indian lands, a prominent feature of Indian
treaties, was an indication of Indian sovereignty over those lands, and
the recognition by the United States of Indian ownership to the lands remaining
strengthened the concept.[12]

The indigenous people of North America were consequently accorded at least
'human' status, albeit at a level of mental retards and children who might
be able to be taught the white man's ways. Much later however, when on
May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act which
empowered him to make treaties with all tribes east of the Mississippi
to cede their lands in exchange for lands in the west,[13] it was clear
that Indian interests were subsumed to the land-hungry settlers. According
to Sven Lindquist, the 'outrageously cruel fashion' of this forced removal
and resettlement of the eastern state Native Americans created a need for
a 'scientific theory' to justify these measures.[14]

About the same time the American Anti-Slavery Society was being formed
to fight against United States based slavery, and it slave owners 'needed
a scientific theory that would make slavery appear natural and justified'.[15]

The Complication of Slavery

The significant difference in the early racial make-up of both countries
had been the existence of slavery in the American colonies. The slave trade
existed as part of the Americas since the beginning of European intrusion,
and was comprised mostly of African slaves. African slaves were transported
to Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central
& South America, starting very early in the 16th Century. The spread
of tobacco farming in the 1670's, and the diminishing number of people
willing to sign-on as indentured servants in the 1680's, increased the
numbers of slaves were brought in from Africa. Eventually 600 to 650 thousand
slaves arrived in America against their will.[16]

The presence of African slaves and their descendents in North America
had a profound effect on the white populace's attitudes about race. There
was less inclination to encourage racial integration with Africans, although
this did not stop some of American's founding fathers (including Thomas
Jefferson who remained opposed to emancipation) from also fathering illegitimate
children to some of the slaves they owned.[17]

In England in the mid 18th century a mass movement to abolish slavery
started at a time when British ships controlled much of the slave trade
and ships from Bristol and Liverpool transported tens of thousands of Africans
annually to the Americas. Yet, within a few years "the worlds biggest slave
trading nation was to become the prime mover behind the ultimately successful
suppression of the trade."[18] In 1811 a bill in the English parliament
made slave trading punishable by death or exile and British involvement
largely ended.

The American response came firstly when President Abraham Lincoln issued
the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st 1863. Unfortunately, the Proclamation
did not free a single slave. Two years later the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States ended slavery in that country. Nevertheless,
as Edward Herman notes,

Built on black slavery, with segregation and poverty helping
reinforce stereotypes after 1865, racism has deep and persistent roots
in this country.[19]

This American racism grew out of a fear, both political and sexual, of
the African presence in their midst. With the overt chains of slavery removed,
white America felt compelled to construct a system of racial, social and
economic apartheid that persists to this day. The sexual component of this
white fear removed any notions of assimilation that might involve a genetic
'absorption' of black people into mainstream American society. Instead,
African-Americans were encouraged to 'assimilate' by the adoption of white
values and standards. As Bell Hooks puts it,

Assimilation…is a strategy deeply rooted in the ideology
of white supremacy and it advocates urge black people to negate blackness,
to imitate white people so as to better absorb their values, their way
of life.[20]

The white American fear of biological assimilation with the African American
appears to have affected the nature of developing notions of assimilation
that were then applied to the Native-Americans. Consequently one can see
in the philosophy and regime of the Indian Boarding school system a concerted
attempt to indoctrinate generations of Native American children into the
'white man's ways', rather than a quest for homogeneity in the broader
society.[21]

Assimilation and Racial Ideology in America and Australia

In the initial British invasion of Australia indigenous peoples were
slaughtered on a grand scale. In Tasmania between 1804 and 1834, the Aboriginal
population was reduced from an estimated 5000 people to just 200. This
represented a 90% reduction in just 30 years. In Victoria it has been estimated
that the Koori population declined by about 60% in just 15 years between
1835 and 1850 [22] as more than 68 individual 'massacres' were perpetrated
in that period. Indeed, according to representative of the NorthWest Clans
of Victoria, Mr. Gary Murray, of the 38 clans that lived in Victoria B.C.
(Before Cook) only 24 today have living descendants.[23] So comprehensive
was the 'ethnic cleansing' of Australia that out of an estimated 500 language
groups on mainland Australia when the British arrived, barely half that
number of languages were to survive.

By the middle of the 19th Century the situation for Aborigines in most
parts of Australia looked very grim. Morris has described it thus, 'The
colonial process had reduced the Aborigines to a residual minority, but
they had not been eliminated. The problem was expected to resolve itself.'[24]
Meanwhile, when Charles Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859,
the author's worst fears came true, as Lindquist observed,

Darwin himself had avoided applying his theory to humankind.
But his readers did so immediately. His theory was soon misused to legitimize
inhuman competition, racism, and the extermination of other races.
[25]

As Karl Schleunes noted, 'The publication of Darwin's theory of biological
evolution in 1859 had an i mmediate impact'.[26] When Professor Ernst Haeckel
developed these theories to incorporate a general theory of human and social
development, the notion was used by racists to justify their, 'conceptions
of superior and inferior peoples and nations.'

About the same time, particularly during the gold rush in Victoria,
race became a major issue on another front. Paranoia about the numbers
Chinese miners on the goldfields created numerous clashes[27] and ultimately
led to the development of the 'White Australia' immigration policy and
also played a key role in the Federation of Australia in 1901. During the
early part of this century, a viciously racist press campaign against 'the
yellow peril' saw Australian cartoonists distinguish themselves by producing
ugly caricatures of evil-looking, opium-smoking, white-woman-corrupting,
yellow hordes to the north, poised to pounce on white populace of Australia.[28]

Social Darwinism became very popular in Australia, especially among
the scientific community. Andrew Markus pointed out that for scientists,
administrators and politicians,

...racial categories provided the organizing concepts of
the three groups; that racial assumptions dominated the work of academics
and administrators; that while administrators took an interest in academic
research, that nearly all politicians derived their racial categories from
practical experience...[29]

Markus further asserts, 'one doesn't have to read extensively to discern
that a central concern of anatomists was to establish whether Aborigines
were closer to the animal than human'.[30] The Elder Professor of Anatomy
at the University of Adelaide in 1926 said that Aborigines were, 'too low
in the scale of humanity' to benefit from 'the civilizing influence of
Anglo Saxon rule'.[31] In the 1920's and 30's Australia's Aborigines were
a treasure trove of curiosity for scientists and academics who believed
that here was the 'missing link' species that would advance the cause of
Social Darwinism. Indigenous people in communities all over Australia were
subject to inspection by 'scientists' interested in such things as similarities
between Aborigines and Chimpanzees, brain capacity and cranium size. One
study in 1920 concluded that, 'the average brain capacity of Aborigines
was between the normal medium intelligence of twelve or thirteen year old
children'[32]

Thus a new policy emerged dubbed, 'Smooth the Dying Pillow', it was
based on the assumption that what was left of the Aboriginal populace would
now die out. This led to the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, which established
the first Australian 'concentration camps' to provide a place for the doomed
race to die off.[33] A general plan evolved which developed into an Australian
version of "assimilation", whereby the theory was that mixed-race people
should be absorbed into the general white community over a period of time.
At the same time the "full-bloods" would die off, thus maintaining the
desired racial homogeneity of Australian society. This plan found expression
when, on 21st April 1937, the first ever conference of Commonwealth and
State Aboriginal authorities as its major resolution, under the general
heading, 'Destiny of the Race', declared,

That this conference believes that the destiny of the natives
of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate
absorption by the people of the Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends
that all efforts be directed to that end.[34]

Writing a decade after this conference, the former Western Australian Protector
of Aborigines, Mr. A. O. Neville, revealed himself as an advocate of miscegenation
as a means of eradicating a potential future race problem. As an influential
former administrator in Aboriginal affairs he contended that to encourage
so-called 'half-bloods' to intermarry with either white men or other 'mixed-bloods'
('octoroons', 'quadroons', etc.) would produce children with increasingly
less 'Aboriginal blood' through several generations. Thus any future 'racial
problem' could be avoided.[35]

The above illustration from Neville's 1947 book, Australia's Coloured
Minority shows how he believed the 'Aboriginal blood' could be bred out
through miscegenation.[36]

Professor A. P. Elkin, Professor of Anthropology at University of Sydney,
and regarded by some as one of the most 'enlightened' anthropologists in
Australian history, but in fact one of the more conservative members of
his profession, and a prime architect of the 'assimilation' policies, in
1929 wrote,

...some races possess certain powers in greater degree...than
do others. Thus, the Australian Aborigines and the African negroes are
human and have their powers, but they are not necessarily equal to the
white or yellow races'.[37]

As Cowlishaw has observed, in 1928 when Anthropology was established at
Sydney University it was almost immediately was co-opted into involvement
in the training of colonial 'patrol officers' for Papua New Guinea and
the Northern Territory. Anthropologists became both the architects, builders
and long-term maintainers of the policy of assimilation, and yet, as Cowlishaw
states,

Neither the relationship between anthropological scholarship
and the state nor the colonizing process was problematised. Applying the
science of anthropology apparently did not require any intellectual scrutiny.[38]

This apparent obsession with race stemmed from the fact that Australia
developed as an overwhelmingly "British" society with a national mania
regarding white racial purity and homogeneity.

This was not necessarily the case in the United States where, '…the
complexities around the American settler experience and their struggle
for independence had a fundamental effect on the way the emerging national
community was to be imagined. It led to a shift away from a concern with
'natural' (British) national culture as a site for identification, and
towards a messianic espousal of ideology as the basis for forging an identity
for the new nation.'[39]

This did not mean that America was not infected with widespread notions
of white supremacy. As I have already pointed out, by the 1830s a need
had arisen to justify both slavery and the brutal treatment of the relocated
eastern Indians and subsequently the 'science' of phrenology became popular.
In Philadelphia an Irish-Quaker doctor called Samuel Morton assembled the
largest collection of human skulls in the world. From his measurements
he concluded that white people's skulls were largest which bestowed them
with 'decided and unquestionable superiority over all nations on earth'.[40]
Whilst these theories were challenged by some, especially German surgeon
Freidrich Tiedemann[41] whose counter arguments gained wide currency in
Europe, it was Morton's ideas that prevailed in the United States.

But the rapid American economic and territorial expansion at this time
meant that in the Southern states, where a huge increase in the demand
for cotton by 1860 led to vast new estates and a dramatic rise in the number
of slaves. That year there were said to be four million slaves in the south,
and the institution of slavery had become 'the foundation of the economic
system'.[42] The civil war put an end to overt slavery of African-Americans,
but it was the beginning of a long period of racial bigotry, segregation,
exclusion and economic deprivation as white attitudes, steeped in notions
of Social Darwinism, hardened. Yet, despite the subsequent racism shown
in the regime of terrorism and brutality waged against the former slaves
and the cultural rewriting of Native American history by Hollywood, there
was never an overt United States government policy of racial elimination
of the indigenous populace.

Consequently we are able to see that the two countries developed fundamentally
different notions about assimilation, as it would apply to their respective
indigenous populations.

Conclusion

It is clear that despite the common origin of the imposed settler-societies
of Australia and North America, different ideas emerged from each nation
about how to absorb the native populations. Whilst the different histories
of occupation and the difference in early treatment of the indigenes contributed
to the way in which each country tried to assimilate the indigenes, the
major factor that made the difference would appear to have been the United
States' experience of slavery.

The fact that eminent Australians today such as the Prime Minister have
such difficulty in accepting a more truthful version of Australian history
might have more than a little to do with the unpalatable reality that the
Australian version of assimilation was used as a form of genocide. Thus
in Australia today we have our own version of 'holocaust denial' being
propagated from the highest office in the land, whilst in America no such
phenomenon is apparent from the oval office of the White House. In my mind
this situation has developed in part because one country attempted merely
cultural assimilation whilst the other, Australia, actually tried to exterminate
its indigenous populace with a deliberate policy of miscegenation.

Until Australian governments and people are able to accept this reality
of history, and properly compensate all the victims of these policies,
there can never be genuine reconciliation or justice for the indigenous
peoples of Australia.